Joshes and Joshettes, I have been contemplating using a schedule in order to provide you with the best content experience. Last week I introduced Philosophy Wednesdays and today I am happy to announce Mondays shall now be known as Business Mondays. What does that mean to you the community, it means I’m doing at least two blog posts a week. Might not sound like much but I haven’t been following any schedule and that’s gotten me nowhere. That’s it for the new schedule I’m working on, let’s dive into today’s post.

For the first Business Monday post, I wanted to revisit the topic of branding but with a twist. I will be bringing you back to 2017, or what I like to call the year of the hustle. Let me give you some insight on why I named it this it’s because I was forced to hustle. I walked away from my job at the end of 2016 and was left without any income at the start of 2017 so I did everything under the sun in order to earn a living. I published my first book, I did consultation work, drop shipping, FBA, door to door sales, B2B direct sales, and a crapload of content creation. Also in that year I started a job in the middle of the year and had to leave it after a couple of months because my father became disabled. It was a crazy year but I made it work. Today I want to focus on the crap load of content creation hustle and what happened because of my disconnection to the brand.

Together with a couple of guys, I launched two YouTube channels and a podcast. One channel was an interview channel and the other was for language learning whereas the podcast focused on history. I personally have no interest in any of these topics but back then that didn’t matter to me. I just saw dollar signs and thus began my journey of creating content that wasn’t made by me. I let others become the face of the channels while I worked only on the backend (everything else to make it successful). I shot the videos, I edited the videos, I uploaded and worked on the SEO and I was always looking on how to make improve our content. Many of you might be thinking that based on the amount of work I put in, I should have been involved with the brand. But, I never had anything to do with the actual content that was being produced. That sounds redundant but I never created the video scripts, came up with the idea or set up the interviews. I didn’t want to influence the content that didn’t interest me so I let the others have creative control. The channels did pretty well, especially the language learning one, on that channel we were generating over a hundred views in a couple of days. But after a couple of months, we stopped uploading videos.

That was a pretty good cliffhanger but it’s true both the channels and the podcast stopped producing content. No one’s heart was in the brand, we only saw it as a way to generate some money. There was no brand ownership and we treated it like a task or job and not as a business. The first thing this taught me was the importance of the why. I know I just did a podcast episode of this but if the why isn’t strong enough (our’s was to make money, with as little work as possible) then you will more than likely fail. The second lesson this taught me was not everyone’s mindset is the same. Since this was the collective effort of four people, we often butted heads. Two of the people did not want to spring a couple of dollars in order to purchase equipment (less than twenty dollars each for lights). If we were scheduled to meet at eleven am, one of the guys would come at four pm and then leave to get food. That person didn’t treat this as a business but as a way to kill time. That’s why I said different mindsets because we were never on the same page. The final thing I learned was when your name isn’t on it you tend not to care as much or at all. This had nothing to do with the group but rather it’s a self-revelation. Even though I was doing everything behind the scenes, I never gave it my all everything was half-assed. I never wanted to improve my craft, I just produced the content as if I was signing my name. There was no originality, no improvement with each new video it was the same exact quality. The scripts were always the same and it never catered to the audience.

The audience on these failed channels and podcast outnumber my own audience. But that doesn’t matter to me because my name is on this (literally its on the site and on on my llc name). It might not sound like a big difference but it ensures that I’m putting out quality content. I’m constantly looking up new tips and tactics in order to bring you the best content possible. The Books By Josh brand was set up as a medium for me to share my knowledge with the world. This brand doesn’t want to create click bait content just to get a thousand clicks and less than a minute of retention. I rather create content that generates twenty views but is consumed entirely. That’s just how I see my brand and your brand may be different. Just do me one favor, own your brand. Don’t make the same mistake as I did and fail to understand the need for involvement with the brand. If you are ashamed to show your products or services to your family and friends, are you in the right business? You must love what you d, if not what’s the point?

Remember to be successful it's your right, duty, and responsibility.